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I interviewed Paul Church about #recruiterenablement. When thinking about this he majors on tech and how it can help you to focus on the human aspects of the job. Paul says "Humans have ownership on building rapport, managing stakeholders, negotiating, creativity and strategic thinking." Specific tips are tech which transcribes and analyses calls, writes up candidate synopses and can be used by hiring managers so you don't need to chase them for feedback. He uses the same tech for marketing (e.g. enabling his podcast - Talent & Growth). Paul also talks about tech for finding candidate data and email sequencing.
Adam spoke to Dan about recruiter enablement and focused specifically on the concept of 'job marketing'. This is an often overlooked aspect of recruitment marketing, which tends to focus more on the brand of the employer, EVP, colleague stories and more. Bill Boorman has spoken many times about 'job brand' and what Dan talks about here fits in very nicely with this. Each job has its own characteristics and brings unique benefits to the role holder. Dan works with employers to bring specific jobs to life and you can learn more about this brilliant idea here.
Adam spoke to Ashfaq Ahmed about recruiter enablement. Ashfaq has trained over 10,000 recruiters and says the instant wow factor recruiters get during training is great but it's as important that employers create the right environment for recruiters to embed their learnings. He mentions companies like Thoughtworks India, who genuinely focus on enabling recruiters, stand out by providing a growth environment. Ashfaq mentions when he started, training was 3 days' shadowing an experienced recruiter and that's no longer good enough. Many people don't have the fundamentals and need to unlearn before they learn. Listen in for some smart app script Google Sheets automation hacks :-)
Adam spoke to Caroline Gleeson about #recruiterenablement and heard all about how Occupop Applicant Tracking Software works. Caroline said recruiter enablement is something she's done for a long time but hadn't used that specific term. They talked about how it's useful to brand and create best practice around this so it becomes less abstract and we can all learn from each other. Occupop offers various features which enable SME recruiters and HR teams effectively such as data, reporting, templates and soon, #ChatGPT prompts.
Adam interviewed Tom Vose about HireAra and how it enables recruiters to be more successful and productive. HireAra was founded by automation consultants who had undertaken a review of a publicly listed recruitment company when they discovered ~10% of a recruiter's time was spent preparing CVs for customer review. Tom says clients spend 10 seconds on a recruitment agency website and correctly asserts that the CV is the agency's product and main representation of the brand so it needs considerable attention. Using automation and genAI, HireAra converts raw CVs into a beautiful candidate presentations.
Adam spoke with Chris Mannion about recruiter enablement. Chris came into talent acquisition after a career as an engineer in the Royal Air Force and then in supply chain with Amazon and Wayfair, where he moved into recruitment 'to spend six months fixing it' and found it was a lot more of a challenge than he expected! Chris talks about removing obstacles for recruiters so they can do their jobs effectively and the concept of the 'dark cockpit' which he learned from aviation engineering (the pilot ONLY wants to see the buttons and alerts which need their attention). Chris is now on an entrepreneurial journey building Sonar Talent as a hiring manager self-serve recruiting platform. Check it out and fill in the form on the website for updates as they move towards public launch.
Adam talked recruiter enablement with Stephanie, who says going from a reactive state to building out repeatable, scalable processes so recruiting is more optimised, efficient and predictable is the big goal of enablement. Making sure the right tools, training, documentation and data are being used and knowledge is being passed from the rest of the business to TA are all vital but less clicks, less tabs and less tools are desirable. Stephanie constantly reverts to the basics; working on the capacity models and reviewing external market factors combined allow TA to report to the business effectively. She recommends learning from other business functions including sales enablement.
Adam interviewed Chris about recruiter enablement but first they talked about Chris's background as a recruitment consultant, recruitment company owner, exiting that company, as founder of MyJobMatcher (now job.com), his idea for OCTA while in hospital and nearly losing his leg. OCTA is a voice, video and text automation platform which enables recruiters to scale themselves without needing to work for a large organisation. Chris explains the product delivers instant ROI and 80% operational savings and his examples are in the volume space as well as for internal engagement.
Adam spoke to Vicki about recruiter enablement from the employer brand and recruitment marketing perspective. Vicki says recruitment teams should be 'raised by the village' because they need to know so much from so many different teams to do their jobs effectively. Vicki says recruiters are the front line for the delivery of EVP and favours running half day EVP immersion sessions for recruiters as well as lunch 'n' learns on subjects such as personal branding, battle cards and LinkedIn. They talked about the benefit of developing 'talent segment portraits' for storytelling and Vicki says sharing resources across the team is vital.
Adam spoke with Alan about recruiter enablement. Alan says it is about providing recruiters with the tools, resources, technology, processes and support they need to do their jobs well. It involves breaking down all the barriers and making sure the resources they need are to hand. Recruiters need the right tech, including both platforms like ATSs and CRMs through to point solutions which wrap around those platforms. They also need the learning on how to use AND get the best out of that tech. We also need to ensure processes are efficient and bottle necks are minimal so recruiters, hiring managers and candidates have the best experience possible.
Adam spoke to Gavin about his vision for 'hiring enablement'. Gavin's company has long split sales and 'delivery' (recruitment) but has definitely learnt and shared between each area. He says he is very passionate about recruiter enablement and that 'hiring enablement' is the extension to that; as an external provider, what is it Solutions Driven can share with customers to help them fulfil their responsibilities to the process effectively? As an example, Gavin says hiring managers have an important role to play in engaging the candidates so hiring enablement is about providing them with what they need to be successful.
Adam interviewed Allison about recruiter enablement. Allison described some of the benefits of working in a large organisation including the ability to learn from each other, share best practices, processes and technology, including in collaboration with RPO customers. Allison says recruiter enablement could refer to anything which helps recruiters be more effective including sourcing, recruitment marketing, events, travel scheduling and administration. She says low hanging fruit include collecting data everywhere so you can spot problem areas fast and automating repetitive tasks like scheduling.
Adam interviewed Claire about recruiter enablement. Claire says it's about removing barriers and giving recruiters everything at their fingertips to be successful and work at pace. Specifically, they talked about how recruiters can sell the employer and the job effectively by understanding the EVP and the nuances of the different jobs. They touched on elevator pitches, objection handling, battle cards, hashtags, influencing hiring managers and more. Claire talks about the benefits of working in RPO as a great foundation for talent acquisition and says data is your friend.
Adam talked to Manjuri about recruiter enablement. Manjuri says recruiter enablement comes in three packages: 1) 'basic' - the skills we need to do a recruiter's role effectively, 2) 'raising the bar' so we become talent advisors with data, insights and the ability to coach hiring managers and 3) advanced, so we become 'talent partners' and work on more sophisticated initiatives like onboarding and internal mobility. Manjuri talked about bringing everything together with Wiki and Confluence and regularly inviting business leaders to address the team so everyone can talk the language of the C-suite more fluently.
Adam talked recruiter enablement with Ivan and after agreeing the RPO space is where a lot of good happens, Ivan said many TA teams adopted an 'enablement' mindset around optimising processes, systems and content for the benefit of the user experience, before the emergence of dedicated enablement roles. He asks the important question, what does good look like? Is it an ongoing initiative or is it about achieving a specific standard? Ivan says building repositories of knowledge so recruiters aren't re-doing the same work repeatedly has been productive. Finally, he suggests there may be need in the TA tech market for products which address the recruiter enablement.
Adam interviewed Liz on recruiter enablement. Liz says it is about ensuring TA partners and recruiters have the resources available to do their jobs effectively, reducing repetitive things robots can do and allowing recruiters to 'play jazz'. (Adam responded 'the robots should play techno while recruiters freestyle'). Liz focused on one often neglected aspect of this subject, hiring manager enablement. It's often said the top predictor of success is the relationship between the hiring manager and the recruiter and generating fast buy-in is vital. Liz recommends valuable processes for intake meetings, using data and the benefits of micro-commitments.
Adam interviewed Lee on recruiter enablement. Lee's one of a growing number of people with this responsibility reflected in his job title and says it's about three main things, which are 1) tools & processes - what should be automated for better candidate, hiring manager and recruiter experiences? 2) data & intelligence - what do we need in terms of competitor intelligence, labour market intelligence and benchmarking? 3) L&D - everyone's background in recruitment is unique so at Lee's company they operate a 'certified' programme so everyone has the same foundational knowledge and core competencies. One specific tip Lee left us with is to never neglect the basics.
Adam interviewed Tracy about recruiter enablement and Tracy explains it in the context of the 'ACE up our sleeves'.. A = accountability; ensuring recruiters know what's important to the business. It's about setting expectations, ownership, empowerment, respecfulness and pride. C = capability (Tracy was previously global TA capability lead at Mondelez). This one includes strong onboarding, learning plans and capability packs, not forgetting hiring manager capability. E = engagement, so providing the right leadership to the team so recruiters stay engaged and focused. It's about checking in, ensuring they have what they need and celebrating success.
Adam interviewed Ben Phillips on #recruiterenablement. Ben says recruiter enablement is all about helping frontline recruiters to engage effectively with candidates while portraying the brand, culture and values consistently. Whether on the phone, by video, in person or on stage, they should be able to do this with the right tone and message. The content aspects of recruiter enablement isn't just about written and visual communication; it's about oral communication too and props like talk tracks are vital for this. He adds that enablement on its own isn't the solution. From enablement we need adoption and then embedding.
Adam interviewed Serge on recruiter enablement. Serge says it's about creating the environment where recruiters can focus on two things; candidate experience and hiring manager relationship. He says we should consider recruiters like account managers and structure our teams so they're given optimal support. He draws the comparison with sales teams which are highly structured and believes that instead of, say, 10 recruiters, we should allocate some of these people to brand awareness, lead gen, tech and analytics. His experience is that this creates a higher performing team and gives a specific example where he led TA in an industrial company.
Adam spoke to Josh Cobleigh on recruiter enablement. Josh is one o a small but growing number of people in talent acquisition with a role specially dedicated to this. He says it's about creating an environment of clarity and consistency and empowering the org to hire better and faster, including not only recruiters but hiring managers and HRBPs also. Tools and tech are important as well as optimising end-to-end processes which can scale more efficiently, enriching TA teams' knowledge so they can hone their craft and the maturity level grows. Listen in for some great practical tips.
Adam interviewed Ben about recruiter enablement. Ben says recruiter enablement is about creating the conditions for success for the team and individual recruiters. He says it includes four 'buckets' which are 1) technology - providing recruiters with the right tools and training to use them. 2) process - the steps to compliance and better outcomes. 3) Knowledge - what we need to know to do our jobs effectively and 4) technique - how we refine and enhance our craft. Ben says recruiting and people is the biggest capital expense in most organisations and should be the best and most scrutinised activity but often isn't.
Adam interviewed Mark about recruiter enablement. As a TA ops manager, Mark's responsible for hiring efficiencies, process improvements, streamlining funnels, digital transformation and bringing together the data which recruiters need to understand the impact of their work. Mark says there's considerable crossover with recruiter enablement, which is the process of giving recruiters what they need to do their jobs well and fast; the tools and resources to find and evaluate people and improve continuously. Mark gave an example of this, when he implemented 1-way video at Ocado and allowed hiring managers to get through 4x more interviews, reducing candidate drop-off and enhancing everyone's experience at the same time.
Adam interviewed Alicia O'Brien on recruiter enablement. Alicia says recruiter enablement is about helping recruiters be more effective at their craft. Recruitment has changed a lot in the last 10-15 years and today recruiters may have less telephone work and more to do updating systems so how do we make sure systems all talk to each other, data is clean and we're using automation such as self-scheduling to give recruiters more time with their candidates? That's part of what we need to achieve with recruiter enablement. Beyond this, Alicia says many of the things she's been excited about over the last few years are now just going mainstream as AI's become so much more accessible.
Holland says, "Recruiter enablement' the processes, content and tech that empower recruitment teams to work efficently and at a higher velocity. It's how we get recruiters to spend more time with qualified leads and less time with everyone else."
Chad says, "We need to be able to scale as fast as the market demand for talent acquisition and we haven't been able to do that. We want recruiters to be 'more human'. How? We implement more and better tech to take the administrative monkey off the recruiters' back."
There are MANY highlights in this. Watch now.
Adam interviewed Ben Browning about sales playbooks for recruitment companies and found a lot of parallels with the principles of recruiter enablement. Ben helps recruitment companies to improve selling, engaging new clients and winning high quality business. As a recruitment sales trainer, Ben found his work would provide a boost but learned longer term, sustainable and ever-increasing benefefits came from better processes and hence he moved into building bespoke playbooks. The purpose of the playbook is to create ongoing velocity and we in talent acquisition also need playbooks like this.
Adam interviewed Dylan Lees-Jones on recruiter enablement from the marketing perspective. Dylan talked about his earlier career in marketing and enabling sales people with decks and case studies so they could win new business. He thinks of recruiter enablement in the context of tool kits. If you can share the tools recruiters need to demonstrate why the candidates need to join your org whether that's award-winning ads which drive applications or infographics which ease onboarding, you're doing a good job. He cautions the importance of integrated campaigns and testing results and the need for collaboration between recruitment marketing, recruiters and hiring managers.
Adam interviewed Jonathan Cohen on recruiter enablement and found a lot of practical advice. "Recruitment's a simple process complicated by people," a wise person told Jonathan early in his 30-year recruitment career. Jonathan says recruiter enablement is giving people what they need to do their job; decent tech which works, time to do their work effectively, a good understanding of what's expected and not to burden them with ridiculous targets. Shout out to Jonathan's wife's charity, Small Acts of Kindness https://www.smallactsofkindness.co.uk/
Adam interviewed Rob Lewis about recruiter enablement and Rob talked about three specific things. 'One-stop-shop' means bringing together all the tools a recruiter needs into a single place so everything's easy to access in real-time. 'Freedom within a framework' means you create templates and guidelines but give recruiters their own creative licence. 'Work out loud' means you tell people what you're doing and expect them to do the same so that you're working in tandem. Rob admits he's full of metaphors and we like them all!
Adam interviewed Catherine Turner about recruiter enablement. With nearly 30 years' experience in the industry, Catherine says onboarding is vital so people know precisely what's expected of them and then enablement is about the tools, processes and systems they need to execute. 30 years in finance recruitment. They also discussed Catherine's pivot from running a finance recruitment company to developing a finance recruitment marketplace. Catherine's rationale and how this is enabling generalist talent acquisition teams better is fascinating and we hope you enjoy.
Adam interviewed Andrea about recruiter enablement. Andrea says recruiter enablement is about providing recruiters with the right processes, tools and training to do their jobs effectively and importantly, reviewing it all regularly. With 15 people in the Skanska recruitment team they need great tools and systems so they can be effective and agile. This is particularly important in construction where they might need to build teams overnight; agility is vital. They talked in slightly more general terms about the way the discipline of recruitment is becoming more important at the exec level, the skills shortage in construction and the impact of AI and digitisation.
Adam interviewed Chantelle about recruiter enablement. Chantelle is passionate and 'geeky' about recruiter enablement. Much of her role involves ensuiring talent programmes are scalabe, repeatable and measurable so efficiency and recruiter experience are high. In enabling recruiters, Chantelle aims to bring all the tools, templates, workflows, guides and decision-making trees together in a 'one stop shop'. Her team have built bootcamps for new joiners and when Chantelle identifies someone has a strength in a specific area, that person will be asked to create another learning initiative for the rest of the team so everyone's capabilities grow together.
Adam interviewed Rob about recruiter enablement and found that his approach forms the essence of the subject. Rob says it is all about making sure sourcers and recruiters have the knowledge and tools they need to do effective recruitment marketing. He provides recruiters with job advert templates which are ~40% prescribed (e.g. 'about employer', D&I statement & benefits) and the remainder of the ad needs distinct input from the recruiter, so they need the skills to do act independently. Rob undertakes workshops and these can be recorded and turned into learning modules for future use. Rob says that once recruiters have a stock of recruitment marketing templates they can share, the process of creating new assets is much faster.
Adam interviewed Brandon about recruiter enablement. Brandon describes it as the touchstone for being more efficient and driving value for hiring managers and leaders. Brandon explained it looks very different in a Series A stage start-up with 15 people and 3 live reqs versus a series B-C start-up with 50 people and 30 reqs. Brandon's excited to see the different tools coming into this area, enabling recruiters and they discussed the impact of generative AI on learning, upskilling, productivity and performance.
Adam spoke with Adam about recruiter enablement and learned he's developed some of his thinking on this from his experience in product management. He says recruiter enablement is about the tools, processes, training and support recruiters need to implement the best tactics. A very interesting angle Adam brought up is that recruiters tend to be entrepreneurial-spirited and allergic to documentation and standardisation but if talent acquisition teams can embrace this more they will better enable recruiters.
Adam interviewed Yasmine about recruiter enablement and also 'candidate enablement'. In a remote company asynchronous working, documentation and self-serve are vital, including for candidates. Remote companies should eliminate the need for people to ask basic questions and reduce time in sync. Meetings should be avoided or have an agenda. Remote has built a handbook so hiring managers can self-serve and know exactly what's expected of them and the recruitment team and be able to answer candidate questions live in interviews.
Adam interviewed Jeremy about recruiter enablement and how it fits in with his specialist area, RecOps. As co-founder of RecOps Collective, Jeremy explained RecOps as the discipline of operationalising and making recruiting more efficient through four key things - 1) data, reporting & analysis, 2) programs such as internal mobility & vendor management, 3) operational effectiveness and 4) strategy. Jeremy agrees recruiter enablement and RecOps are not synonymous but very closely linked. He says enablement is about how we're training our recruiters and giving them the tools they need to be as productive and successful as possible.
Adam interviewed Stacey about recruiter enablement and Stacey explained it's not just about tools and systems but also programmes and ways of working for recruiters and hiring managers. The first thing to do is agree goals and the org's hiring philosophy early and then ensure the business is informed on how and why the team is working the way it is. Quick wins can include hiring manager training and larger initiatives include building a knowledge bank for the way TA works in the org, repeatable processes and use of collaboration tools.
Adam spoke with Gary about recruiter enablement. Gary says recruiter enablement includes the language, messaging and tools recruiters need to influence peers, stakeholders and candidates effectively. It allows them to be on script and delivering the optimal corporate message and the best experience for hiring managers and candidates. What is it we say to the candidate in the 2 minutes between greeting them at reception and leading them to the interview? What do we say when we show them out after the assessment? These moments provide great opportunities to influence and we should be using them to deliver a consistent experience and additional positive messaging.
In this slightly extended interview, Adam talked with Jacob and Steve about recruiter enablement and gained many insights. Jacob said he's never once joined an organisation with anything in place for enablement and he's had to build everything afresh from the candidate elevator pitch to the instructions for candidates on how to even get to the interview. Steve describes recruiter enablement as a detailed roadmap for success. They also discussed why it seems to have been skipped in the pursuit of space-age innovation.
"Losers have goals. Winners have systems." Adam interviewed Jenny on recruiter enablement and they explored the components needed to create systems. When enabling recruiters, Jenny believes 'the why' is important but 'the how' is even more so. You can't just hand people the tools. You need to do so with clear, consistent instructions. One-offs don't scale so enablement allows repeatability and in turn, this allows teams to go faster. Jenny describes enablement as if you're giving people an 'Iron Man' suit. Consistency reduces barriers and bias. Playbooks help recruiters generate consistency. Creating common language and definitions generate consistency.
Adam interviewed Martin on recruiter enablement and they discussed the importance of capturing and sharing information on Notion or Slack channels and regular focused team time for knowledge exchange. Immersive offers an embedded talent model working with numerous employers as their talent acquisition team so the value in sharing good ways of working across different customer accounts is high.
interviewed James and was delighted to hear his take on the subject. James believes in the concept of creating a brilliant recruiter experience because downstream, that turns into brilliant candidate experience. He pointed out the silos within talent acquisition which we need to break down and how recruiter enablement can play an important role in this. Specifically, James talked about how actively enhanced communications, market intelligence and data can help AND how this is for the benefit of the entire talent acquisition organisation's position as a partner to the business.
Adam interviewed Holland about recruiter enablement and found a wealth of existing expertise in this area. They discussed Holland's definition of recruiter enablement; the processes, content and tools recruiters need so they can spend more time with qualified candidates and less time on everything else. Also included in this was a look at content, content repositories, lead generation, objection handling and communicating benefits to candidates. Holland's position is that recruiters have limited time and all the non-recruiter members of the talent acquisition team should be focused on providing them with high quality leads.
Adam talked with David about recruiter enablement and David's previous work in this area leading large talent acquisition teams. They discussed training on the fundamentals of recruitment, the benefits of rotating talent acquisition teams around different roles, regularly reviewing and removing low-value activities, involving the whole team in creating frameworks and guidelines and more.
Adam talked with Dan about recruiter enablement, providing a suite of tools, resources and intelligence to recruiters. Specifically they discussed playbooks, templates, shared resources, collaboratively-designed processes and ensuring the value of talent acquisition is high and not transactional. They also discussed Dan's growing interest in organisational design.
Adam talked with Rory about his interpretation of recruiter enablement, providing recruiters with tools and services which make them more effective and efficient and reduce the need for them to re-invent the wheel and undertake repetitive tasks. Specifically, they discussed the Squire solution, which records, transcribes and logs the most important elements of candidate interviews into the ATS so recruiters don't have to take notes and then type them up post-interview. Genius stuff and a very useful element of recruiter enablement.
Adam talked with Nicolle about recruiter enablement and discussed Nicolle's bi-weekly upskilling cycle including external guests and encouraging the talent acquisition team to look outside the business for learning and ideas. Nicolle talked about how the development of an employer value proposition was very useful in creating consistency in job adverts, social media posting and how that EVP helped develop the org's TA tone of voice.
Adam interviewed Dave explored the purpose of sales enablement and the similarities between sales and recruitment. Sales people are bombarded with new technology to use and that creates confusion, inconsistent process, varied levels of adoption and knowledge generation and duplication of administration. The first thing Dave did in enablement was to create knowledge repositories so everyone knew how to use the tools, had up-to-date 'ideal customer profile' descriptions, had access to FAQs and were able to share best practices and successes. Dave and Adam discussed the best way to share information and which tools have been useful.
Adam interviewed Cathal about his journey from biotech to software engineering and product management, founding a recruitment company and ultimately to founding a recruitment enablement tech start-up TA.guru. Cathal believes recruiter enablement does not replace existing processes and technologies but makes them stronger. He notes that the majority of recruiters don't have a technical background in the areas they're recruiting for so has built TA.guru as a knowledge-sharing platform so recruiters have better context on the roles they're recruiting for through market insights and domain expertise.
Adam inteviewed Per about recruiter enablement and the amazing tools he has built to help recruiters with their jobs. We discussed his talent acquisition framework which includes pipelining, assessment and controls AND his Notion pages on sourcing and AI. Per talked about his belief in the power of collaboration, shared networks and more. Per's company Pipelabs audits employers' talent acquisition processes and provides consulting and advisory work.
Adam interviewed Spencer Hurley on recruiter enablement. After 11 years at Nationwide Building Society managing a broad variety of talent acquisition teams including exec, tech, DEI, innovation and employer brand, Spencer is well placed to talk about this subject. He says it's all about setting up recruiters for and eliminating barriers to success. His advice is to industrialise repeatable processes. "Do it once well and then iterate." He cautions we need to add value and avoid the danger of becoming 'bad robots' because if that happens, we'll be eliminated. Listen out for one special example of recruiter enablement relating to competency-based interviewing.
Adam interviewed Tom White on recruiter enablement. Tom says recruiter enablement is about processes, tools and being able to make life easier for recruiters, candidates and hiring managers. They discussed the recruiter psyche which is often human-first but the danger here is we may over-service while other business functions have moved to self-serve models. When we make the answers to FAQs accessible infinitely, recruiters can then dedicate themselves to finding great candidates, providing great experiences and working on added value tasks like enhancing our EVP, assessment and selection.
Adam interviewed Ashley on recruiter enablement and they talked about a very interesting aspect of this; templating versus personalisation. While they agreed there's a place for templating, Ashley says he's never worked anywhere where the pre-built templates were fit for purpose and the recruiter needs to customise the responses; hyper-personalisation has driven success for him. He says we WILL be replaced by AI if all we're doing is pressing send on templates and that's what most of us are doing today. Note to tech providers; Ashley has undertaken numerous ATS swaps in recent years and the best always think carefully about candidate experience.
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